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Our beautiful Wild Coast has been in the news over the past year or so due to Shell’s plans to carry out a seismic survey between Morgan Bay and Port St Johns.

There were protests, petitions, boycotts, and a general sense of we’ll do what we want from Shell, which had some powerful names pushing for the survey to go ahead.

In the end, or at least as things stand, those plans have been scuppered after a high court set aside a decision by Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe to grant Shell an exploration right.

Let’s pivot to the latest story to see the Wild Coast make the news, which centres around a 30-metre-wide whirlpool seen in the ocean about 245 metres off Rame Head point. TimesLIVE has the details:

Photographed on August 17 by Green Scorpion Robert Stegmann during a routine police service air patrol, the images show one and possibly even two spinning holes in the ocean.

Image: Robert Stegmann

Whirlpools are dangerous for ocean users… The plane was about 350m above the phenomenon.

East London Museum principal natural scientist Kevin Cole said that while there have often been stories of large whirlpools forming off the coastline, this was the first time they had photographic evidence.

The existence of these whirlpools may shed light on some unsolved shipping disasters, including the sinking of the SS Waratah. On July 26, 1909, the ship, with 211 passengers and crew departed from Durban bound for Cape Town and disappeared without a trace.

It was initially thought that the wreckage had been located in 1999 but that was later shown to be incorrect.

Cole was investigating whether the volatile, fast-flowing Agulhas current had come close inshore and connected with a longshore drift flowing in the opposite direction.

The energy displaced by the two opposing forces would caused a “violent vortex which evolved into a spinning whirlpool”.

He said the event took place against a background of changing ocean current behaviour in a shifting climate.

Prof Tommy Bornman, a research leader at the SA Environment Observation Network and coastal ecology expert, doesn’t believe the Agulhas current was directly involved in the whirlpool’s formation:

“It is possible that with exceptionally strong winds, the Agulhas has come in closer and the longshore drift has also become exceptionally strong.”

However, after a closer inspection of the photographs, he said: “I don’t think the Agulhas current is involved — too close inshore and way too shallow at a 30m depth.”

Bornman went on to state that the whirlpool is, in his opinion, “the result of a very strong longshore current coming up against a strong rip current”.

Whatever the cause, it’s fascinating to see photographic proof of a whirlpool shot expertly from the sky.

[source:timeslive]